Battlescape ... bugs?

[hellblade]

First of all, switching on "Time Units" in battlescape, during a battlescape mission sometimes crashes the game.

Secondly, and more importantly ... why is everything "slightly off" compared to the original game?
The color/brightness is slightly off;
The brightness of each tile affected by lighting (whether it is lighting from a light source or lighting from a solider walking closer) is slightlly off;
The vision of tanks is slightly off (i.e. areas aren't revealed even though they clearly should be)
AI seems to be slightly different ... aliens lurking in areas where they never lurked before.

I'm asking because I wonder why the above things are slightly off when the game should have just copied the original game mechanics?  Not that it's a major issue though.

(edit: The tank's weird vision seems to be from that the "eyes" of tank is linked to it's turret instead of it's body, which I believe is a bug from the new game feature "extra movement options when holding Ctrl")

[Solarius Scorch]

Mounting the camera on the turret rather than body seems pretty logical to me.

[Dioxine]

How can this be a bug if it enables the tank to see more, and to STRAFE

[yrizoud]

The color/brightness is slightly off;
The brightness of each tile affected by lighting (whether it is lighting from a light source or lighting from a solider walking closer) is slightlly off;

Have you compared on a CRT screen of 4:3 ratio ? Or the vanilla game played on DOSBOX vs OpenXcom, on the same screen ?
In the latter case, if you can see a difference, you can take a screenshot of it.

AI seems to be slightly different ... aliens lurking in areas where they never lurked before.

The path nodes are (which serve as possible waypoints) are those of the original game

the game should have just copied the original game mechanics?

You make it sound simple, but nobody has the original source code... and it's extremely difficult to reverse-engineer an AI which has hidden movement.

[pilot00]

Mounting the camera on the turret rather than body seems pretty logical to me.

One can argue though, that the turret is far weaker armor wise and wouldnt be a logical place to have the cammera/sensors. Likewise the normal tanks have their driver vision ports usually on the chasis.

[Solarius Scorch]

One can argue though, that the turret is far weaker armor wise and wouldn't be a logical place to have the cammera/sensors. Likewise the normal tanks have their driver vision ports usually on the chasis.

I'm not an expert, or even a particularly knowledgeable layman, but I think we can't compare full-sized tanks with combat drones, since they have completely different battle roles.

Secondly, even though the turret is less armoured than the chassis, why would it prevent mounting the sensors on it? Sensors aren't armoured anyway.

[Hobbes]

The brightness of each tile affected by lighting (whether it is lighting from a light source or lighting from a solider walking closer) is slightlly off;

The light/shadowing system is slightly different from the original. You can really see this with buildings that have upper balconies which will obscure the side of the building underneath them.

[pilot00]

I'm not an expert, or even a particularly knowledgeable layman, but I think we can't compare full-sized tanks with combat drones, since they have completely different battle roles.

Secondly, even though the turret is less armoured than the chassis, why would it prevent mounting the sensors on it? Sensors aren't armoured anyway.

I was comparing it with RL tanks, and pointing out that as a design it would sort of make sense, not actually raising an arguement.
Having it embeded into the hull though, rather than exposed on the  turret would make it a bit difficult to hit the sensor and turning it blind.

I am not an expert too, but thats what I have been told about automated camera sights and tracking systems in the army in casual discussions.

[TKO]

Interesting points about real-life tanks. ..For gameplay purposes, having vision in the turret seems to be the only practical way to do it in OpenXCom. After all, if the turret turns to face backwards, you need to be able to see backwards to shoot at anything that's there. ..Plus you get options for strafing, if enabled.

I think tank-vision only confuses people who select the "alternative movement methods" option, without fully understanding it; or who have forgotten about it by the time they encounter its effects. ..I'm not sure there's much, from a game-design perspective, that could be done to make it more obvious, unless the sight-cone was shown visually - but that seems an in-elegant solution.

[pilot00]

Interesting points about real-life tanks. ..For gameplay purposes, having vision in the turret seems to be the only practical way to do it in OpenXCom. After all, if the turret turns to face backwards, you need to be able to see backwards to shoot at anything that's there. ..Plus you get options for strafing, if enabled.

I think tank-vision only confuses people who select the "alternative movement methods" option, without fully understanding it; or who have forgotten about it by the time they encounter its effects. ..I'm not sure there's much, from a game-design perspective, that could be done to make it more obvious, unless the sight-cone was shown visually - but that seems an in-elegant solution.

I Am not pro or against it, whatever makes the game more enjoyable